South LA community activists celebrated in multimedia exhibit

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This is a story about space.

It won't visit other galaxies, or even take you out of South LA - but even here, there's plenty of unexplored territory.

South LA Democratic Spaces hopes to change that, through an exhibit opening tonight at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. They want people to know those uncharted blocks are full of life.

Here's one example, from Rudy Espinoza, who manages a microlending program at the Community Financial Resource Center:

"Tacos los Juichos on Slauson and Broadway. These folks were repurposing that lot right under the 110 overpass. So what was happening was, at 10, 11, 12:00 at night, you have these entreprenuers there repurposing this space and making it safe. To me, that's a democratic space, where people could take ownership over their community."

Espinoza's work supports entrepreneurs in what he calls the 'informal economy.'

"A lot of times when we think about innovation, we think about San Francisco, Silicon Valley, even the westside here in LA, but it's actually happening here in our backyard in South Los Angeles. These folks" - that is, street vendors - "there are a ton of them, and these folks are all saying, I have to create my own job, and I'm gonna do this here."

Espinoza is one of 15 community advocates featured in Democratic Spaces. These characters surfaced through local media and social networks - not out of the traditional spaces of community power.

"The formal places of so-called democracy are marked as places like City Hall," said George Villanueva, one of the exhibit's organizers. "But, you know, if you really want to see where spaces of democracy are, and where the people are, you have to go out to the community where there are indigenous networks, and a lot of those places aren't your formal institutions."

A kickoff event starts tonight at 6:30 in the Annenberg School's East Lobby. The exhibit runs through December.